chat room

Users choose their own names in anonymous iOS chat app

(Newser) -
Facebook's "anonymity" app is finally revealed, and as PC Magazine reports, it's "a throwback to the popular chat rooms of the mid-90s"—with a few modern updates. The Rooms app , currently available only for iPhone, lets users create rooms to chat about whatever interests them....
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Minn. man accused of surfing Internet for victims to coax into suicide

(Newser) -
A Minnesota man accused of seeking out suicidal people online and persuading them to kill themselves has been banned from using the Internet until his next court hearing. William Melchert-Dinkel—who allegedly posed as a female nurse in suicide-related chat rooms—has been charged with two counts of aiding suicides,...
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Children unprepared for virtual world share more than is prudent

(Newser) -
Normally vigilant parents are in a tizzy over Google’s surreptitious addition of its Buzz social networking client to Gmail, which they say enables kids with little understanding of what is prudent to share online to enter a dangerous world. “This is foisted on children and they love it,...
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Here's who you meet in vid chat—over and over

(Newser) -
Chatroulette is getting “next big thing” buzz all over the Internet, with many swearing that the site, which lets you video chat with random people all over the world, is a total revolution. And it is—“for about six and a half minutes,” writes Josh Kurp on...
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Docs suspect faulty wiring, and that condition may be more common than realized

(Newser) -
Sexual thoughts cause some people to have fits of sneezing, the Guardian reports. Psychiatrists at a British hospital were turned on to the problem by a patient, and a survey of Internet chat rooms found others afflicted, including three people who sneezed after orgasm.
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New companies try to bring real-time socializing back to web

(Newser) -
A group of Silicon Valley startups is looking to bring the "social" back into social-networking and other popular websites, the New York Times reports. Vivaty is developing 3-D virtual chat rooms users can embed in web pages—including social-networking profiles—and will begin Facebook testing this week. And Meebo’...
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Online chat coming too

(Newser) -
Facebook is launching a series of new privacy features today, allowing users to better pinpoint who can see which parts of their information, PC World reports. Privacy has been a watchword at Facebook ever since the PR disaster that was the Beacon advertising platform, which tracked users online. “With...
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New ratings system Down Under

(Newser) -
Australian Internet users are getting wary about new regulations meant to keep minors away from mature content, Ars Technica reports. A stringent new ratings system to be introduced in January is meant to stop kids from accessing adult-oriented content, but critics say it will be child's play to get around,...
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(Newser) -
Detectives in 36 countries have busted a global pedophile ring, rescuing 31 young children and babies who were sexually abused live on the Internet, and identifying 700 suspects. "You could go and if you were in the club, arrange a time and a place when online you could view...
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Japanese groups gather in online chat rooms to plot very real suicides

(Newser) -
Of all the things initiated in anonymous online chat rooms, group suicide has to be the most macabre. David Samuels explores why hundreds of Japanese adults, previously unknown to each other, have gathered to die together in small groups, often asphyxiating themselves in cars by carefully placing charcoal burners to...
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